Pg. 162-163:
“But for the most part they enjoyed their work and find themselves engrossed in the stories they are copying. Beneath a description of the death of hector on the plain of Troy, one scribe, completely absorbed in the words he is copying, has written most sincerely:
‘I am greatly grieved at the above-mentioned death.’”
Another such copyist, measuring the endurance of his beloved art against his own brief life span, concludes:
“Sad it is, little parti-colored white book, for a day will surely come when someone will say over your page: ‘The hand that wrote this is no more.”
Consider this Irish poem slipped in the margins of a 9th-century Latin commentary on Virgil, etc....
I and Pangur Ban my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
‘Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
‘Gainst the walls he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Cahill sums up:
“These were happy human beings, occasionally waspish, but normally filled with delight at the tasks their fate had set for them. They did not see themselves as drones. Rather, they engaged the text they were working on, tried to comprehend it after a fashion, and, if possible, add to it, even improve on it...book truly spoke to book, and writer to scribe, and scribe to reader...These books were, as we would say in today’s jargon, open, interfacing, and intertextual...”
[CHAP. 1] [AP HOME]
Pg. 162-163:
“But for the most part they enjoyed their work and find themselves engrossed in the stories they are copying. Beneath a description of the death of hector on the plain of Troy, one scribe, completely absorbed in the words he is copying, has written most sincerely:
Another such copyist, measuring the endurance of his beloved art against his own brief life span, concludes:
Consider this Irish poem slipped in the margins of a 9th-century Latin commentary on Virgil, etc....
I and Pangur Ban my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
‘Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
‘Gainst the walls he sets his eye,
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban my cat and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Cahill sums up:
“These were happy human beings, occasionally waspish, but normally filled with delight at the tasks their fate had set for them. They did not see themselves as drones. Rather, they engaged the text they were working on, tried to comprehend it after a fashion, and, if possible, add to it, even improve on it...book truly spoke to book, and writer to scribe, and scribe to reader...These books were, as we would say in today’s jargon, open, interfacing, and intertextual...”